Oklahoma Lawmakers Introduce ESA legislation

January 17, 2014

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Oklahoma lawmakers have introduced Education Savings Account legislation. You could not ask for a more capable and committed champion than Rep. Jason Nelson and Oklahoma could benefit from the reform. Oklahoma could benefit from broadening the opportunities available to students. The Census Bureau projections for youth population increase are well above the take-up rates for private choice programs, so the public school establishment should take a deep breath before going into “the sky is falling!” mode. There is going to be plenty of students, but others demographic trends will be more problematic. The elderly population of Oklahoma will increase by 53% by 2030, meaning that there will be fierce competition for public funds between health care and education, young and old.

The people who will have to provide those public dollars in 2030 include the kids in the Oklahoma public school system now. When you look at NAEP, between 25% and 36% are at full grade level proficiency depending on subject/grade level.  Improving learning is not a task for 2030, but rather for right now. Oklahoma needs to improve K-12 outcomes as fast as possible, and needs to expand flexibility in the system in order to become both more effective and cost-effective in the future. The Oklahoma ESA legislation provides for eligible students with between funding 90 percent to 30 percent of the funds that would have gone to a participating child’s public school. If parents want to have a go at producing savings for the state treasury in return for the maximum possible flexibility in educational methods, it can be a mutually beneficial exchange that advantages everyone.

In addition to the possible benefits for Oklahoma students, the ESA concept itself would benefit by expanding the universe of people actively engaged in the model. We’ve only scratched the surface of what is possible here in Arizona. I am anxious to see the innovations that new teams people in other states develop-new methods to educate students, new ways to oversee accounts, etc.  I’m hoping that the next laboratory of reform fires up the beakers in 2014.

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Posted by matthewladner

Mourning Constitutional- OK kids score even worse than AZ

September 17, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Regular JPGB readers will recall that the Goldwater Institute gave a version of the United States Citizenship Test to Arizona high school students, only to learn that they were profoundly ignorant regarding American government, history and geography. Only 3.5% of Arizona public school students got six or more questions correct, the passing threshold for immigrants.

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs wanted to know how Oklahoma high school students would fare on the exam- so we surveyed them and gave them precisely the same set of questions we asked Arizona students.

Perhaps I ought not to have been so hard on Arizona students. After all, they passed at a rate that was 25% higher than their peers in Oklahoma!

That’s right: the passing rate for Oklahoma high school students was 2.8%. They somehow underperformed Arizona’s already abysmally pathetic performance.

My favorite part of writing this paper was poking around in the Oklahoma state standards for civics. Here’s a quote:

Oklahoma schools teach social studies in Kindergarten through Grade 12. … However it is presented, social studies as a field of study incorporates many disciplines in an integrated fashion, and is designed to promote civic competence. Civic competence is the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required of students to be able to assume ‘the office of citizen,’ as Thomas Jefferson called it.

A social studies education encourages and enables each student to acquire a core of basic knowledge, an arsenal of useful skills, and a way of thinking drawn from many academic disciplines. Thus equipped, students are prepared to become informed, contributing, and participating citizens in this democratic republic, the United States of America.

That all sounds swell, except for the part where despite being taught social studies from K-12, Oklahoma high school students come out knowing about as much about American history and government as they know about Quantum Physics or ancient Sanskrit.

These kids wouldn’t do much worse if the pollster asked them questions in Sanskrit instead of English. The pollster would say “I am going to ask you some questions about American civics in Sanskrit. Answer as best you can.  Question 1: संस्कृता वाक् संस्कृता वाक् संस्कृता वाक् संस्कृता वाक् ?”

There is some small chance they would answer “George Washington” after all.

I have an empty metal coffee pot in my office marked “Sweden Civics Survey Fund.” Please drop by a give what you can afford. Once it gets to a couple of thousand bucks, I’ll retain the pollster to give this exact same survey on AMERICAN civics to high school students in Sweden.

They couldn’t do much worse than the kids in Arizona and Oklahoma. Sadly, I suspect they would do much better.

(Edited for Clarity)

14 Comments | civic values | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner